Bulgarians in North Macedonia oppose conditional inclusion in the Constitution

Representatives of Bulgarian organizations in North Macedonia appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Policies for Bulgarians Abroad. They presented a declaration of protest against the proposal currently under discussion to include Bulgarians in North Macedonia’s Constitution, with the amendment to take effect at a later date.

Listing Bulgarians in the Constitution’s preamble, without including them in the legal framework that guarantees their rights, would not fulfill the commitment that has been made, the representatives of Bulgarian organizations in North Macedonia said. “We deserve the same rights as the other communities, and we do not want to be placed at a disadvantage any longer”, Marinela Petreska, President of the Association for Macedonian-Bulgarian Friendship in Bitola, told the MPs.

Bulgarians in North Macedonia are calling on institutions in Bulgaria and the EU not to allow the agreed conditions to be circumvented. Some MPs supported the declaration and said that the rights of the Bulgarian community in North Macedonia should be defended in this way, reports Dobrina Karambolova of the Bulgarian National Radio’s Horizont channel.

Edited by Ivo Ivanov

Translated by Kostadin Atanasov